The Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network: Temporal and Spatial Scales of HF Radar Wave Data

HF radar wave data are obtained through an iterative inversion procedure that provides an estimate of the directional spectrum, from which waveheight, period and direction parameters can be derived. The critical data quality requirements for the backscatter spectra, in order to generate reliable wave measurements, are the signal-to-noise levels in the second order regions along with a clear separation of first and second order components. Increased averaging of radar data can reduce the sampling variability and provide more robust wave measurements.A variety of spatial and temporal spectral averaging schemes are implemented and evaluated using data from a wave buoy in the South Australian Gulf. Improvements are found in the quality of extracted wave data and the results suggest that averaging over time periods of at least one hour may be beneficial. Future upgrades in the network bandwidth available from the ACORN systems would provide the potential to include near real-time wave and wind data to the IMOS data portal.